Reframing (Post-)Magical Realist Celluloid: Magicorealism in Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids Trilogy

Abstract

From literary adaptations to original narratives, magical realism has motivated long-running debates in contemporary film studies. Some critics, such as Maggie Ann Bowers and Gerret Rowlan, consider magical realism just a visual aesthetic within certain realistic films. In more recent years, though, this claim has been completely debunked by putting the spotlight not only on the avant-garde aesthetic that takes up the ideas of pioneers Roh or Carpentier, but the transgression and complexities that the geopolitical and cultural elements, as with their literary counterpart, have brought into (post-)magical realism and the Latin American tradition.
Following this trend, and drawing a parallel between magical realism and postmodern theories, Frederick Luis Aldama interrogates the concept of magical realism prompted by the “boom” writers by identifying contemporary magical realism as “magicorealism,” an expression applied to ethnic writers and filmmakers of the late twentieth century, especially those coming from the Latinx sphere. This term is used to construct global narratives of resistance that, apart from making subaltern modes dominant and turning the “other” into the main subject, embrace their dialogical intersection with European/US narrative modes. In the case of Latinx studies, this postmodern conception of magical realism encompasses contemporary Latinx/Hispanic cinema, in which Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids trilogy can be included. In this particular work, as I will argue in this article, the persistent presence of both sociopolitical Mexican and US references and a magical realist visual aesthetic brings these films to the aforementioned cinematic conception.